Thursday, May 03, 2007

Poooooooooram!!!!!!!!!!

Every city's got its own celebration... Rio and many of the carribean cities have their carnivals. Mumbai has its ganesh chathurthi, mysore its dusshera, trivandrum its Onam (my favorite, since i'm a trivandrumite). and whole of Kerala has got - THE POORAM!!!!! the charisma surrounding the term pooram is astounding. that charisma echoes everywhere in kerala. and myself, a student at thrissur for the last two years, didn't want to miss pooram this year at any cost. so, after i reached home two days before the pooram, i started back on the day of the pooram, to thrissur, by train...

while at the hostel, we came to hear that a coupla elephants cudn't stand the humid damp climate and ran away to cooler shores. any way, we were a safe distance removed from them. by the time we reached poorapparambu (pooram ground) on the vadakkumnatha temple ground, there was an ocean of humanity. since it was my first thrissur pooram, i was really excited. elephants from one camp were all set for the colorful kudamattam (a display of colorful umbrellas). at the other camp, nearer to the temple, there were only umbrellas, no elephants....

soon, some more umbrellas came walking, without elephants... they had the shape of gods and godesses of hindu myths, and provided more colour to the already colorful festival...

then the elephants of the second group came, all decorated and dressed for the occasion...

people started shouting and cheering, and we also were drawn into that one common psyche of a single organism called pooram. we were also cheering, shouting, moving rhythmically with the melam.... the entire town of thrissur bcame one soul, with one thought and a lot of joy and fun...

kudamattom over, we had dinner. from indian coffee house, round south. it was stuffy and real humid. we were all bathed in sweat. then, i walked to my uncle's home, to catch a few hours sleep. for me, the next day was going to be as eventful as this, tho not as fun filled.

the aratt and the festive walk around the town by the elephants and the god on its top had begun, accompanied by music, fire and a lot of people. when all the constituent temples of the pooram complete their aratt, there will be the fire works- vedikettu.

so i woke up at 2. in the morning. raju was also with me. we were walking down the MG Road, and we reached near the round when we heard the fireworks start. we rushed down the side alleys to were our other friends were standing, and could see the final big blast from the round. so one side had been done with, this time. the next one started quarter of a km away along the circumference of the round, and would end right in front of us...

we felt the world shake, we felt the eaves hanging above us shivering in the blasts... we felt our ears paining quite joyfully... tat's pooram- thrissur pooram....

now ppl may say tht the fireworks of thrissur pooram will be nowhere near that at nenmara. ppl may say melam at thrissur is not as good as those at some other places. they may say the best elephants come at other pooram. but can anyone explain to me in simple terms, why thrissur pooram is still the best celebrated pooram in kerala????? the only reason could be, the tradition, so many temples that participate and the people....

and strangely enough, vadakkumnatha temple, that is the centre of all these festivities, doesn't have any special festival, ulsavom or pooram of its own!!!